


The Selfish Moon

by deskclutter



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-22
Updated: 2010-06-22
Packaged: 2017-10-10 05:37:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deskclutter/pseuds/deskclutter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Koumyou Sanzo and the Legend of Chang E.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Selfish Moon

  
**Title:** The Selfish Moon  
**Day/Theme:** February 18 / how the trickster stole the moon  
**Series:** Saiyuki  
**Character/Pairing:** Koumyou, Nii, Sanzo  
**Rating:** G  
In a temple, there lived a man who was kind and gentle, and well loved by his disciples. They would have revolved around him as satellites do, but he did not like to call himself a planet. He was but one man, and it is whole nations that live on planets, not the selfish desires of one man.

He heard the story of a woman who swallowed a pill that granted immortality out of selfishness. For stealing the gift that was not hers, she ascended to the moon and was forced to remain there for eternity. That, he told his disciples, was similar to himself, a moon who carried selfishness on his back, and moons do not have satellites. His disciples protested, but the man only smiled and asked them who ought to know him better: the disciples, who had known him for a fraction of his life, or himself, who had known him for the entirety of _his_ life? Chastened, the disciples did not pester their master overmuch about the subject for the rest of the day.

Before the end of the man's life, he fell into the company of another holy man who was the night. "Which of us shall swallow up the other?" asked the night in apparent jest. The man only smiled. It was as though the slice of the waning moon had lodged in his mouth.

To swallow up the moon is to rob the sun of its reflection, and though the moon may be but a ghost of the sun, a part of the sun remains on the moon. The night cannot steal the moon if it already has been stolen, though it may gobble and gulp at the moon greedily.

The man once believed the woman on the moon was a portion of himself, lonely and elevated far beyond what he desired. That is, he believed it until he heard a voice.


End file.
